Tag: metal underground

Sean Clark has been a part of the metal underground trading and selling circle for a long time, hunting down CDs and rare vinyls across the globe. As he gears up to sell some of his excess to finance further purchases of rare Profanatica material, he was able to answer a few questions for a profile:

When did you start selling/trading CDs and why did you get into CD trading? Were you a tape trader as well?

I think that I started seriously trading music back in the mid-’90s when I lived in Australia. Mostly copying tapes and trading with local friends. I started trading CDs on a wider scale around 2000 once I moved to the USA and a friend of mine introduced me to newsgroups, etc…

What appeals to you about underground metal? Does the same thing still appeal to you? Do you listen to other music as well?

EVERYTHING. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about today’s metal scene… so I just mostly keep myself busy with the stuff that I enjoyed in the past (but still do check out new bands nowadays just to make sure that I’m not missing out on something). Today’s scene is too hard to keep up to date with though… too many new releases every month.

Yes, I do listen to other music as well, but underground metal is usually about 80-90% of my music library.

What was your first encounter with the DLA/DMU and how did it ruin your life?

I honestly cannot remember how I found out about DLA/DMU…. but it was after speaking to you… must have been back in ’97? Probably on the newsgroups. I think that you bought some cds from me once though… but I knew you before I started selling/trading. We’ve had contact through various platforms for a long time now.

What current bands make you excited?

I am not so excited about many current bands because they mostly just remind me of better bands in the past. I think that most of the bands that I get excited about now aren’t even metal (Lana Del Ray, for example).

If people like the CDs you have, where do they find a list and buy them?

After death metal and black metal had made their meaningful contributions, a cry rang out: support the scene!

By that it was meant that you should go to local shows, buy records, and otherwise give monetary subsistence and publicity to local bands.

They left off a key detail: which local bands?

Actually, they don’t want you to ask that question. All local bands, they hope. That way, even if their bands are talentless, they’ll be able to sell merch and music because, y’know be cool man, support the scene!

In fact, what “support the scene” really means is “abolish quality control.” Forget trying to have good metal bands, let’s just have a lot. That way everyone can play at this neat game called being as cool as Euronymous or Azagthoth.

I have a different philosophy: support the good bands, and ignore the bad. This idea is often called “natural selection.” It means that if you want a strong scene, you only support the strong candidates, and let the weak ones die out.

Post-1994 people have no idea how cruel, judgmental and intolerant the older scene was — or how much this worked to its benefit. People shunned bands that weren’t the complete package: music, lyrics, name, imagery, music, production, visual art, and personalities. The scene was more elitist than these faux-elitist hipsters could ever dream of being.

It was downright hostile to people who didn’t “get it,” where “it” was a complex and insular culture so alienated from the mainstream it saw anyone who believed society had a future to be a mental failure. It saw society itself to be insane, and headed for doom. It realized how modern life was constructed of very many ancient lies, fluffed up and re-covered to look shiny and new.

The underground is not a place for joiners. It’s not a place for me-tooers. It’s not a place for the extra people of humanity who, having nothing they really care about, go casting around for an “identity” they can manufacture out of things they buy and activities they attend.

Don’t support the scene. The scene is a parasite. Support the good metal bands, and death to the rest.